Wojciech Kuczok’s novel, Muck (2003), is the quasi-autobiographical story of the hero’s nightmare of a childhood, marked by humiliations (“Old K.” reached with sadistic relish for his riding crop as a tool for fatherly instruction). Kuczok successfully adds his name to the tradition of literature that exorcises the demons of childhood. He paints a remarkable portrait of his father, “old K.”, a neurasthenic member of the intelligentsia, the typical “authoritarian character”. Here we also have some superb sketches of family life, satirical and lyrical portraits of the household members, and some superb scenes from life in Silesia (his family chronicle goes back as far as the pre-war era). The ending of the book, the catastrophic collapse of the family home as it sinks into the muck of the title (because of a sewage system accident and ground subsidence, which happens quite often in areas where coal mines are right next to the city) is like the ending of The Fall of the House of Usher, the famous story by Edgar Allan Poe, a classic mystery tale. But the literary quality of this prose is also another pointer to dissuade you from reading the novel as naturalistic or biographical. “I spent my whole life” – says the narrator – “running away from that house, only to end up being its ruin.” “I used to be there, but now I’m not” – the final sentence sounds like an old Latin inscription on a tombstone. This novel tells the story of an adventure that is shared by everyone, because everyone has their own idyllic memories, but also carries the scars of their family past.

(text by Marek Zaleski)

Link to extract from Muck